Popular reviews

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus] ★★★★★ 18

  Since I can remember, my favorite bird and the one I have felt closest to always has been the Turkey Vulture. When I die I want my body to be left in a lonely place where the turkey vultures can eat it and all of what I was will be within them and live on, finally doing something good for a family that I will have provided something for other than heartache. Whenever I am feeling bad I look up and I see them there, their joy in gliding upon the upper winds heals something inside of me even if just enough to get by a little longer. The turkey vulture eats rotting flesh, stops pestilence, makes life from death.…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★ 3

  55

  Weird film. Wes Craven's examination of ironic detachment. Basically if the opening of Scream 4 was a feature-length film. High school kids trying to escape the myths that they've been confined into. Most of it doesn't work, the scares especially, but it has a haunting, goofy energy that is a clear precursor to what Craven did more successfully in his next film.

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★ 1

  kind of fitting that craven's last gasp of auteurist energy went into this bizarro slasher that remixes the teen angst and slick visual sensibility of his post-williamson collaboration efforts with his lesser known 80s genre oddities like Shocker and Deadly Blessing, and many of his career-spanning interests in the suburban family unit and religion and urban legends. features lots of a 70yo man's inscrutable idea of teenage behavior and rituals, awful late 2000s fashion trends, and an insanely confusing amount of lore surrounding its rob zombie riverman ripper killer that guts kids into bloody pieces while saying things like "fuck your fucking unborn child" and trying to collect their souls like pokemon because he's sort of like a california condor???? no…

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  Review by Jude ★★★★½ 1

  in an absolutely bonkers minor key, embellished with one of the strangest senses of space and interconnectivity i've seen in a slasher, and traipsing through an absurd wealth of thinly sketched but ultimately quite compelling ideas about trauma and masculinity and mythology, a solid late effort indeed. fractured identities flee into in the next generation, and, failing to escape their pain and guilt, one by one fold back into the lone survivor, as only the living remain to bear witness, to play the part of the heroic victim, and "fake it good", learning to perform a love of pain just to be human again, human still. smashed dollhouses, strewn bits of a childhood, visitations in the mirror, all of it amounts to the burden of simply living. if the high school segments weren't so affectionately, ridiculously lived-in, none of this might land. but pathos and pleasure go hand in hand, don't they?

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  Review by sydney ★★★★ 3

  possibly the most wes craven-y wes craven movie, which is probably why some people love it and a lot of people hate it. if someone wanted to tear this apart for misogyny, racism, ableism re: mental disorders it wouldn't be difficult, personally it was not unpleasant enough to offend me more than the 90% of horror movies that are just as bad or worse. this is too ridiculous to be very scary or emotional, but there is one painful shot of pretty dangling feet where the blood just keeps coming and coming...and then there are the scenes involving mirrors...great digital color palette and wild as hell opening sequence and good characters and fun bird mythology? the way he thinks teenagers talk is delightful to me. i want/need to watch it again. i'm now over halfway into completing his filmography. sigh.

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★

  still confused at why this isn't considered a late period horror masterpiece, only reason i can think of is the cruelty on display but the film is far from being devoid of humanity or empathy, there is strong emotional resonance in the protagonist's arc of both grappling with his sanity and his family, and a scene with his mother had me on the verge of tears. grief and tragedy are two central motifs here, and how the actions of the past can forever shape the events of the future. these seven are defined by their relation to something they had no control over, and many of them die because of this, they didn't have a choice about how their lives…

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  Review by Adam ★★★

  idc this was so much fun

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  Review by Ian West ★★½ 6

  I haven’t revisited this in over five years and one thing still holds true for me... despite an incredibly messy first half, My Soul to Take is saved by a highly enjoyable second half—and ‘prayer conditioning’ lol. Many ideas in this are straight up regurgitated from his other movies but to way lesser effect—this is far from top form Craven but there’s still a few fun surprises to be had here.

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  Review by Tony the 1313 Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★½ 7

  Daily Horror Scavenger Hunt - August 2018

  2. a Wes Craven movie that doesn’t have a sequel 

  What world is this where someone named Fang rules over the entire high school and pimps out her friends and charges students to ride their bikes?! I actually loved her character but who are these students who just put up with this crap?!

  I also enjoyed this more than the last time I watched it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a mess but I kinda dug the whole surreal disjointed “what the hell is happening no really what is happening” vibe it’s got going on. I think the biggest problem is that it wants to be a supernatural slasher, but it really doesn’t do…

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  Review by {Todd} ★½ 4

  "Wake up and smell the Starbucks." - Leah (sigh)

  - Wes Craven Rankings: boxd.it/1VXGE

  I feel like I could win a fight against a California condor so I'm really excited Trump has finally decriminalized condor boxing.

  WTF Wes Craven? There was a serial killer, and he died, and on the day he died seven babies were born, and once a year they celebrate the event, it's called Ripper Day, and this one kid screws up a ritual and the ripper comes back, and then boredom happens.

  I checked two times to see if this was listed as "comedy" but nope, it's just kind of not good in way that's weird and unpleasant and that I hated because of its badness.…

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  Review by FilmApe ★★★★

  Are teenagers always climbing in each other's bedroom windows in reality? Because, if they are, I feel like I missed out on an important part of my teenage years.

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  Review by Mark Garrett ★★★★½ 1

  Initially befuddling, Craven's plot-thick, expansive, and meaner than shit film uses the garish, nasty qualities of high school to inspire a number of explosive moments of horror. Contains an elusive mythology, downright experimental performances, and a host of disorienting, transgressive maneuvers